The free time continued into Sunday; I desperately needed a day off. I could have been at the Claremont. I should be approving curtains and rod placement; I should be eyeballing the marble tiles in the bathrooms and whether they should be hung vertically for a touch of whimsy; I should be approving a slab of reclaimed wood for an entryway table that was being custom designed; I should be . . . I should be . . . I should be playing hooky. So I did.
I slept in, I ate eggs sitting down instead of toast on the way out the door, and I was presently on an afternoon stroll with Simon, with absolutely no direction and nowhere to be. Hooky. Doing it.
We’d started off walking down the main drag, stopped to get coffee, and then turned down a hidden pathway through an old garden gate back up into the hills. We chatted as we walked, our hands linked. He was telling me about a call he’d had with Trevor from back east. They’d kept in touch after the reunion, and his wife had indeed sent me an autographed cookbook that had been signed by none other than Ina Garten herself.
She’d touched it. Touched the book that now lived on my nightstand. I wonder if her husband, Jeffrey, had touched it. Perhaps the day she’d been signing countless cookbooks, he’d stopped by her office. Maybe as they’d chatted about rosemary bushes and lobster rolls (as you do), he’d patted her hand, weary from signing her own name. Maybe her hand (and now Jeffrey’s) was resting on the cookbook that became my cookbook! It could have happened.
We stopped at a corner, not quite sure where we were. I could see peekaboo Pacific here and there, but not enough to orient myself.
“Where’s the house?” I asked, looking back up to the hillside. No landmarks I recognized.
“We’re a few blocks away. I think I zigged when I should have zagged. No problem, it shouldn’t be too far,” he said, looking left, then right, then left again. “I think it’s this way,” he said. As we walked, my phone rang. I reached into my pocket and turned it off.
“I don’t think I’ve seen you do that in weeks,” he remarked, and I smiled ruefully.
“I’ll feel guilty Monday, but today I can’t think about anything work related. My head will literally burst.”
He nodded, squeezing my hand as we walked. “Let’s talk about what we should make for dinner tonight—I feel like cooking. How about we stop at that farmers’ market you’re so in love with and see if we can find something fun—”
Still continuing to walk, I didn’t realize he had stopped dead in his tracks. I pulled on his arm. “Hey. Come on, pokey. Hey, Simon.” I snapped my fingers to get his attention. He was staring at a house at the end of the street, partially hidden by trees and a jungle of weeds.
“Babe, look at that.”
“Look at what—that shack? Yeah, it looks pretty abandoned. Let’s head back. Farmers’ market? Dinner?” I answered, pulling on his hand again. He stood fast, peering through the debris.
“No, look at that house. Isn’t it interesting?”
“Interesting isn’t the word I would use—” But he pulled me toward the house. Which had a For Sale sign in the yard.
Uh . . . what?
“You’re kidding, right?” I asked, dragging my feet as he led me up the walk. As we got closer, I saw that it was probably once a very nice house. Victorian, but not froufrou. Peeling paint gave it a melancholy look, but it had clean lines and looked to be decent sized. I glanced around at the other houses on the street; rows of beautifully maintained homes. How had this house deteriorated so?
“It’s pretty, isn’t it?” a voice called, and we turned to see an older woman peering over her newspaper from her front porch.
“Um, well,” I hedged, smiling at her.
“Well, it used to be pretty. Want to see the inside?” she asked.
“Oh no, we couldn’t—” I started, only to be interrupted by Simon. “Yes, we’d love to.”
“Babe, what are you doing?” I whispered through my teeth as the woman produced a set of keys from her pocket and threw them over to us. He caught them in midair, saying, “Thanks.”
“No trouble at all. The Realtor has only shown it a few times, but I still have a set of keys. Mrs. Shrewsbury—she’s the old owner—went to live with her daughter in Sacramento. She let the house get the best of her the last few years, but it’s got good bones,” she said, going back to her paper.
Good bones. I mentally snorted. Someone’s been watching HGTV . . .
“Have you lost your mind?” I asked quietly as we made our way up the walk. Dodging clumps of grass and twigs, we headed up onto the porch.